All the Beggars Riding

by Lucy Caldwell

  It’s awful with Alfie. She’s wretchedly sick, afternoons and evenings. Her skin breaks out in spots; her hair is thin and lank, comes out in clumps on the pillow. She can’t help but think she’s being punished. She knew Patrick wouldn’t be thrilled at the news, but she didn’t expect him to take it so badly. Not anger – she was prepared for that, because he’s got a temper on him – but quiet, the way he retreats into himself, and she can’t get him to engage. She asks him if he’ll tell his wife and hopes he’ll shout at her, give her a chance to argue her case. Part of her hopes that he’ll hit her, drag her by the hair, take control. Instead, he cries. He doesn’t want to lose her, he doesn’t want to lose Lara, he doesn’t know what to do. That’s when she realises that she has to take things into her own hands: she has to go to Belfast, and confront Catriona, and decide things once and for all.

  *

  I’ve looked at the blank page for almost an hour, now, wondering how, wondering where, to go on. To my surprise, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t think I want to, don’t think I need to, push on and see my mother in pain, the agonies of it, the guilt, the way it eats her up inside. I’d been looking forward to those parts most: or thought I was. The big confrontation scene, where she tells him she knows his wife’s pregnant, and he challenges her, How do you know? Or else breaks down. The scene where we leave, and she waits for him to arrive and see us gone, our things gone too, and doesn’t know where or how to reach us. I thought I wanted to write that: to punish him, to see her punishing him, to see them suffering, together, each on their own. I wanted to see how they reconciled: except that I see now that my mother had no choice, or thought she didn’t. Even apart from the practicalities and the financial support, need had become a habit, and she didn’t know how to live without it. They were yoked together, whether they liked it or not. All the time I watched them as a child, and was convinced that no parents on earth loved each other as much as my mother and father – it wasn’t love, it was desperation, and addiction, and a shared guilt, and a need for that guilt and its consequences to feel justified. They needed each other because they had to need each other: because if they didn’t, or stopped needing each other, then they were lost and damned. Their need was a force-field, their fantasy, keeping them safe, keeping the world at bay. She wasn’t happy, all those years. I see that now. It was shrivelling her up inside, the life she led, the decisions she’d made. Even as a fictional character, I don’t want to see her, can’t make myself make her, go through all that again. It’s taken me completely by surprise, because I thought I was only just starting, getting into the swing of things. But I think I’m done with telling her story now, telling theirs.

  There’s just one more thing. I’ve hardly managed to enter my father’s head: it’s been difficult enough to enter my mother’s. But what I have managed, or realised, is this. In Patrick’s head, it isn’t that he’s living one life, in which he’s being unfaithful. He’s got two lives, and they exist in parallel, separate from each other and distinct, and in and to each he is utterly faithful. The measure of this, the proof, is that he is incapable of ending either. The longer Patrick doesn’t leave his wife and child in Belfast, the longer he continues his double lives, the more entrenched, essential, the fact of each of them – the fact of both of them – becomes. You could scoff and say that he’s having his cake and eating it. I’ve been there, many times, much crueller. I don’t believe it’s as simple as that, though. I don’t believe that he enjoys this double life, these double lives, this churning out of lies and half-lies to feed the need of the greater deception. I don’t, I really don’t. I used to be angry with him, from Fuengirola and for years. More than angry: I used to despise him. Writing this, I realise that really I should pity him: that he ended up living his life like this, split, shackled. It’s taken me by surprise, writing that. Instinctively I feel it’s true, and something – I’m not quite sure how to put this, except to say that something has somehow melted in me, suddenly; dissolved, or disappeared. I don’t need to write them any more.

  It’s strange how opposed I was to fiction, and for so long. I think it’s because my mother and father, I’ve often thought, lived by stories. They convinced themselves that they were characters in some grand story, some great passion, instead of the reality that it was. Making them into a story, making them into characters in their own story, felt for a long time as if it would be giving in to them. Perhaps it didn’t happen like any of that at all. It probably didn’t. But I understand how it could have, now that I’ve tried it.

  And I understand too what I need to do next.

  What happened next

  Tracking them down

  It was easy to find them. Thank God for Google. How, I wonder several times a day, did we ever do anything without it? All I had to do was type in their names and sieve through the results. It might have been harder if either of them had moved from Belfast; but neither of them had. It occurred to me, too, that Veronica might have married and changed her name; but even this problem was sidestepped because she works under her maiden name. Her first name is unusual enough to make it simple to find her; and she’s the only Veronica Connolly in the whole of Belfast, so far as I can tell. She is with a practice of solicitors called Cameron Glover, and she’s also registered on LinkedIn, so I was able to confirm it was her by the dates and her education. Michael was trickier to find, because there are quite a few Michael Connollys in Belfast. There was the added complication that he could be using his full name, Patrick Michael, or simply Patrick – and there are even more Patrick Connollys in Belfast than Michaels. After a few hours of trawling the results and cross-checking, I was pretty sure that I had him. He was an artist (who’d have thought it? an actual artist, a painter) and he had exhibited in several Belfast cafés and galleries. He taught at the University of Ulster’s School of Art and Design, York Street campus, and through their website I was able to find a biography of him, confirming his date of birth, and with a recent photo.

  It was strange, seeing my half-sister and half-brother like that. The traces of their lives, radioactive trails; faint but indelible, criss-crossing the internet like flare paths. As I stalked both of them through Solicitors Regulatory Authority web pages, LinkedIn profiles, newspaper reviews, student blogs, Flickr photostreams and all the rest of it, I wondered why I had never done it before, and I didn’t have an answer.

  So that was that: one afternoon, a couple of Google searches, and I had my half-siblings in touching distance.

  It took longer than an afternoon to compose the letter I sent to each of them. That took a full week – not that you’d think it, if you saw the end result. A few sparse lines, saying who I was and how I’d found them, and asking if they would be interested in meeting up, should I ever come to Belfast. I think those short sentences were the most difficult I’ve ever had to write. I sent Veronica’s to her place of work, and Michael’s I sent to the gallery that had most recently exhibited his paintings.

  It was almost a month before I heard anything.

  Cameron Glover Solicitors

  6th Floor Diamond House

  10 Royal Avenue

  Belfast

  Co. Antrim

  Friday 22nd July 2011

  Dear Ms. Moorhouse,

  I am writing in response to your letter dated 5th July 2011. My apologies for the time it has taken me to reply to the letter, but I must confess that its appearance was unexpected and, I’m sorry to say, most unwelcome. I do not know what factors may have prompted you to attempt contact now, after all these years, and I will be straight with you and say that I have no desire whatsoever to enter into any form of correspondence with you or any other members of the Moorhouse family. I trust you will appreciate and abide by this. I would further ask you, presuming you have not done so already, to refrain from making contact with my mother. She remarried subsequent to the events of 1985, and I feel able to speak for her in saying that any communications akin to the letter you sent to me woul
d prove most distressing to her.

  I thank you for your time and understanding.

  Sincerely,

  Veronica Connolly

  From: Michael Connolly

  To: Lara Moorhouse

  Sent: Wednesday, 27 July 2011, 22:19

  Subject: your letter

  Dear Lara,

  Jeez. It was a surprise to get your letter. It took a while to reach me because the gallerist you sent it to was away on summer hols and the gallery was closed over the Twelfth weekend. But got to me it did eventually and I must say I didn’t exactly know what to think when I opened it. A whole welter of thoughts and emotions if I’m honest. I have often wondered what happened to you and your brother. You ask in the letter if I would be prepared to meet up, should you ever come to Belfast. Well, I think the answer is that yes, I would be. Do you have imminent plans to visit or was the situation hypothetical?

  Best wishes,

  Michael

  Patrick Michael Connolly

  I met him on a Friday evening. I’d flown into Belfast the night before, and spent the day wandering the city. It wasn’t at all what I expected. It wasn’t what I’d remembered, under a miasma of slow, stupefied grief. If you don’t know Belfast, if all you know of it is the litany of murders and maimings, the annual images of marching and rioting, the hardened male voices defending or accusing on the radio, there’s nothing to prepare you for how beautiful it is. True, it’s not beautiful in the way Dublin is – squares and parks and elegant Georgian buildings – or with the variety of London, or in the sultry way of a city like Paris. But it’s beautiful nonetheless, lying low against the lough, nestled on all other sides by hills. Belfast is a city cupped, cradled in the palm of a hand; a broken creature, something precious. Walking through the streets that morning, I was struck when I realised that at the end of every road, even in the very centre of town, you can see the hills, purple with heather, rising up ahead, so close it feels like you could squint and touch them. There was a neatness, too; a modesty in the city I wasn’t expecting. You think of it as harsh and male; defiant. Those voices again: salty, gravelled with ingrained distrust. But the streets are tidy, many of them newly paved, with tubs of bright flowers and young slim trees, and the people are all too willing to nod hello or point you in the right direction. I walked all around the wide streets of the city centre and the square of the City Hall, and out to the University and the Botanical Gardens, then back down to the Waterfront where I sat on a bench in the salt-fresh breeze and remembered and wondered. I had a lovely day for it: that helped. Clear and bright; warm enough to not need a jacket. Only a few fleecy clouds high in the sky; the light full and almost liquid, as if you could breathe it in.

  Strange, as I walked those streets, and the streets too around the budget hotel where I was staying, buzzing with cafés and bars and glass-fronted design studios: from time to time a brief, fierce stab of something would hit me. Something I can’t put a name to, even now. Not envy, or regret, nothing so simple as that. It was something, perhaps, akin to acknowledgement of the years and the waste that it took to get this far.

  He was already there when I arrived, a deliberate, excruciating five minutes late: the John Hewitt pub on Donegall Street. He’d got a table in a far corner, and he was facing the door, a pint of Guinness in front of him. The pub was pretty full, even that early in the evening, but you couldn’t miss him: he was obviously looking for someone, scanning the faces of everyone who walked in. I saw him, and I saw him seeing me, all in the same moment.

  I’d rehearsed the moment so much in my head, anticipated it so. When it actually happened, as it was happening, it seemed to pass too thinly, inconsequential.

  He half got up; waved me over. I excused my way through a knot of people at the bar.

  ‘A’right,’ he said, ‘how’s about ye?’ Casual as anything. And I may as well say it now: apologies for the clumsy way I try to render his accent on the page. ‘You must be Lara, I’m Michael, pleased to meet ya.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you too,’ I managed.

  ‘What are you drinking? I thought of gettin’ ya a Guinness, or a half, but I didn’t know if you’d be up for that?’

  ‘No, that’d be . . .’ I said, not wanting to disappoint already. My voice sounded apologetic; English, weak.

  ‘Come on, I’m only coddin’, what would you rather?’

  ‘Actually, I’d love a glass of white wine. Thank you.’

  ‘No problemo. All right – hang on a sec.’

  We did a funny sideways sort of dance-jiggle as he shuffled past me and I leaned back to let him pass, so that neither of us would touch. He went up to the bar. God, I was grateful for the breather. It was throwing me off, him being so casual, so friendly. As if we were just two acquaintances meeting, not two people who’d lived the majority of their lives in each other’s shadow. I sat on a stool angled so I could see him, and watched his back at the bar; his profile when he turned to joke with a woman standing next to him. I’d seen pictures of him online, of course, but that was nothing to seeing him in the flesh. He was tall, good-looking – in a ravaged sort of way. His face was pale and unshaven – two or three days of stubble, glinting gingery-black. He looked older than his age. He looked like an artist, too: at least in what he was wearing. There was a sort of carelessness to his clothes: beige chinos, rolled up unevenly at the bottom, white plimsolls, a sky-blue linen shirt, creased, unbuttoned at the neck. I immediately felt overdressed and ever so boring, in my sensible cream blouse and Whistles sale skirt and court shoes. I’d felt so smart in the hotel room. I’d even put on lipstick.

  Don’t be silly, I tried to tell myself. This isn’t a date. But it was a date, of sorts.

  I tugged my blouse loose from the waistband of the skirt; mussed my hair a bit. I even undid a button before realising that it might look like I was trying to seduce him, and fumbled to do it back up again in time. Blotted a bit of my lipstick away. My stupid, boxy handbag: fake designer, so shiny. I should have come as myself.

  He came back with my white wine and slid into his seat, and for a moment or so we studied each other’s faces.

  ‘We don’t look like each other,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. Even apart from the style of clothes, we didn’t. He had my father’s hair, dark and wild and curly. But his eyes – bright blue – must have been his mother’s. His way of looking at you sideways out of them. His build, too, he must have got that from his mother’s side. He was tall, as I’ve said, but slim, almost thin; sloping shoulders that hunched in on themselves; cheekbones. Whereas I – but you know what I look like. I wondered if Veronica looked like him; a version of him. In the thumbnails I’d found online – on her solicitors’ website – she looked vague, stern, bland. Hair scraped back; steel-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Well,’ he said, and he said some unpronounceable Irish word, raised his glass and took a steady swallow.

  I took a gulp of wine. Never has a drink been so welcome.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Here we are.’

  I took a breath, and tried to straighten out my swirling thoughts, and launched into the speech I’d prepared about how good it was to meet him, and I was sorry if I’d offended his sister by writing to her, and all the rest of it.

  His face clouded over slightly when I mentioned his sister. I stopped, worried I’d said something wrong.

  ‘I’ve never been big with Nicky,’ he said. ‘She’s – how do I put this? – she can be very pass-remarkable, if you get my drift.’

  ‘Oh,’ I fumbled, not knowing what to say. Then I said, stupidly, ‘That’s a good word, pass-remarkable.’

  He looked at me as if I was insane.

  ‘Are you close with yours?’ he said, after a moment. ‘Your brother, I mean.’ He looked away, as if his question was only casual. But he hadn’t been quick enough.

  ‘When we were children,’ I began. Then I thought of Alfie’s life these days, thought of mine.
The Christmases and family dinners they suffered me through, his daughters with their stifled giggles and bribes if they’d stay in the room and talk to Auntie Lara. ‘To be honest: not really,’ I found myself saying. I always tell myself that but for Danielle, my brother and I would be close, but perhaps it’s not true, after all. I hadn’t realised it until I said it.

  ‘So he’s not interested in – all this, all this meeting-up malarkey, then?’

  ‘I don’t think so. In actual fact, I didn’t even tell him I was coming. So I suppose there’s your answer to the previous question. We can’t be that close at all, can we? I did tell him I was writing to you, and to – to Veronica. And he wasn’t too keen on that. He didn’t think it was . . .’ I tried to remember the word Alfie had used. ‘Sensible. Sleeping dogs, sort of thing. So . . .’ I shrugged; ran out of steam. Took another too-large too-fast mouthful of wine.

  ‘Well, Nicky’s always been the sensible one of the two of us. So if your brother’s the sensible one of youse – I guess that makes us the crazy ones.’ He flashed me a nervous grin: it was nervous, and I saw that for all of his charm, his casual greeting, his act of being at ease, he wasn’t, either.

  ‘You’re not – married, kids, sort of thing?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Me either. Nicky is. Girl and a boy.’

  ‘Alfie the same. Only he’s got two girls. Twins.’

  ‘Nicky’s a solicitor.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Of course you do. What’s your brother do?’